Grey's Anatomy Alternate Universe: Begins at the end of the last scene in 08x13, If/Then, and explores how alternate universe Meredith handles being just a girl in a bar with a cute guy drinking scotch. How does a bright and shiny Meredith deal with...
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Meredith Weber still had the bite of tequila on her tongue when she told her boss the residents' nickname for him. "McDreary," she said, "We call you McDreary."
He laughed, smiled, tipped his half-empty glass of scotch and took another sip. He looked tired, the darkness around his eyes standing out in the soft barroom light. She couldn't be sure she hadn't seen him laugh before, but the way the skin around his eyes bunched and the lines of his mouth stretched wide were certainly unfamiliar.
"Do you think that's funny?" she asked.
He was turning the glass on the bar in slow revolutions between his fingers, precise motions that spun it on a membrane of condensation. His smile was gone, his face the same placid surface that she had grown accustomed to when he appeared for the occasional Neuro consult. He considered his drink like he considered a screen of brain scans and his fingers glided around the glass with the same kind of grace as if he had a scalpel in his hand.
"No," he said, more to the scotch than her. "It's apt. McDreary." He tapped the rim of the glass. "Yeah, that's my life."
Meredith watched a woman sit down at a table at the back of the bar, her head bobbing in conversation behind his shoulder. To her left a table of nearly-retired oncologists drank cocktails and spoke in complaining tones. Nurses played pool in the corner. Her colleagues unwound in their off hours around her, laughing, shouting. Meredith watched as her boss stared down through his scotch. His eyebrows bunched and a muscle in his jaw jumped like he was swallowing tears. She imagined him in this bar each night, trying to unravel whatever had drove him here in the first place.
She thought of when he had smiled, that one moment when his white teeth had peeked from behind his lips. His eyes were blue. She had never noticed before, maybe he looked down so often.
"So how about tonight you're not McDreary. You're just," she said, and he was looking at her. "You're just a guy in a bar."
His mouth picked up with a twitch of hope. "And you're just a girl in a bar."
"I am." she said, "and I drink tequila." She thought of when Alex, confronted with his betrayal, had said that Cristina was a lunatic. Despite the ache in her chest she still smiled.
He called the bartender by name and ordered her another drink. She sat straight, trying her best to look like she had any experience in this at all.
"Cheers," he said.
She poured the shot down her throat slowly. A girl who drinks tequila, she told herself. In some near future she would confidently order herself shot after shot, downing them expertly, cheered on by the bar patrons around her. She would be like those girls in college who never seemed to study, who didn't even own a bookshelf, who had to organize their earrings by color so they had a hope of finding the right ones.
